by C. T. Adams
I found I liked the look on her. Proud, confident.
Her own stinging magic fought against mine, and even though I’d been forced to share the power I’d gained from my father with Antoine Monier, the leader of the cats, the magic at my command was formidable enough to cow her. The longer I held her gaze and let the dark power rise into the hand that held her to sting her skin, the less confident she got. After a few long moments, she flicked her gaze down to my collar and unclenched her fists, with effort. “As you wish, my lord.”
I released her hair and smoothed it gently, then ran a slow finger down her jawline until she shivered. I always enjoyed watching her shiver from my touch. There were few women in the world who could make me feel true desire—rather than simple lust, but Tuli was one of them. She met my eyes again with confusion as she caught the scent, which is exactly where I wanted to keep her for a time. “I’m not my father, Tuli, even though I can be if required. But neither am I the Rimush you remember. I am Ahmad al-Narmer, and I rule all the snakes in the world, including the ones who formerly answered to my father. Those who accept my rule will be treated fairly. Those who challenge me—” I looked around again at the bodies of snakes that covered the ground. “Will meet the fate of those you see.”
The anger was back again, and I let it pass this time. “But you helped the prisoners escape and allowed the bird and wolf to kill those you are supposed to protect. Why should we follow a traitor to the cause?”
“The cause, my dear Tuli, wasn’t to bring down the wrath of the Sazi council on our heads before the final event. The plan was to remain unnoticed until it was too late.” That part was easy to fake knowledge of. It was always my father’s plan to remain unnoticed for as long as possible. I forced my own anger to rise, because if I really had favored my father’s plan for conquest of the earth, I would be furious at the ineptitude shown here. “Of course I helped them. I’m not an idiot like whoever planned this kidnapping. Did you even realize you held the raptor councilwoman as prisoner? Do you know they are organizing for war against you at this very moment? Why do you think I’ve been under cover as a councilman for this long, except to keep them lulled into complacency? This debacle has ruined decades of my efforts!”
Plans within plans. Another thing my father was known for, and it certainly wouldn’t be out of character for him to have thrust me into a seat as a spy for centuries and pretend that I was an enemy until needed. Time had little meaning to him. I find it more precious, but Tuli didn’t need to know that.
Now the confusion was in her voice, blended with the horror that I hoped to hear. “A council member? War? But why would Nasil—?”
Ah. Now we were getting somewhere. Taking Angelique was Nasil’s plan. For what purpose, though? He didn’t take actions lightly. I let disgust rise into my voice and walked away, stepping over a dead body with the same distaste my father would exhibit. I was expecting she would follow, and she did. “Tell me more of Nasil’s plan. Since he witnessed my father’s death in Germany, his goals are his own and may or may not include the result my father and I expected.”
I flicked my gaze toward her to see suspicion of my father’s trusted aide rising into her face. Good. Exactly as planned.
Searing pain erupted in my neck and shoulder. Reality lost meaning and there were suddenly both jungle and cave in my view. Dark and light blended and blurred. Too many faces and too many legs peering through a fog at me now, and I couldn’t seem to move. Fear wasn’t something I’d experienced much, but I felt it now.
Suddenly I was looking down on me again, as though from outside. Will was swearing and slamming palms down on my chest, which was bouncing enough to spray rocks out from under my back. My ribs hurt now, and they hurt a lot, so more than one must be broken. How long had he been doing CPR on me? At least my neck didn’t hurt as much so whatever Ahmad had done did the trick. I wasn’t surprised he wouldn’t deign to touch me to start my heart again, though.
Will bent down to push air into my lungs, but he’s not my type. I threw up a hand to fend off his face. “No . . . thanks.” I coughed up something that tasted a lot like blood. “My wife . . . wouldn’t approve.”
He collapsed backward onto his butt with a relieved sound. I noticed that the two women were watching the scene from the wall. The tiger, Rayna, was looking exhausted. Angelique was looking . . . confused. But I didn’t see Ahmad. Still, I didn’t hear any gunfire either, so he must be outside finishing off the rest of the soldiers.
I was starting to feel a lot better now and could almost move enough to sit up. It hurt to breathe deep, but it was nothing a little athletic tape and a couple of days’ rest wouldn’t cure. “Tell Ahmad to wear gloves next time he feeds me magic. I’m getting to where I really hate flashbacks . . . especially from snakes. The tongue flicky-tasty thing is just creepy.”
Will furrowed his brows and shook his head. “What are you talking about? Ahmad hasn’t gotten here yet. Rayna’s the one who fed me magic while I healed you, so you should thank the nice tiger that you’re alive. In fact, we should all thank the nice tiger we’re alive, since she’s also an awesome shot with a sniper rifle.”
Rayna? I stared at her closely and she didn’t resemble Tuli in the slightest. It was too detailed for imagination and didn’t feel like a dream. No, it was definitely Ahmad’s head I was in, which meant—
“Someone needs to get back to the helicopter then. Ahmad got attacked and I was there for the ride. Don’t know how exactly, but I’ve learned not to ignore the seer thing.” I nodded toward Rayna. “Oh . . . and thanks. If it helps any, I feel worse than you look.”
It pulled a chuckle from her. “It does help a little bit, actually. My ego, at least.”
Will was obviously puzzled. “You get hindsight, so without touching him, you shouldn’t have a clue what might have happened to him. How do you know?”
The Jeep honking outside the cave interrupted any answer I might have given . . . if I had any idea how to respond.
The only thing I knew for certain was that Ahmad was toast if we didn’t get to him in time.
Chapter Four
“SO, STILL NO sign of him, huh?”
Will was flat on a couch in the Sazi clinic waiting room in Boulder, Colorado, trying to get his breathing back to normal. Bobby was checking his vital signs, looking more like an M.D. than the chemist he was. His nearly blue-black skin was an interesting contrast to Will’s nutty red. The regular rooms were already full of doctors treating the women . . . Sue included. Asking questions was the only thing keeping me out of the exam room. I’d already had my ass kicked out twice by the healers.
Bobby answered because Will was still out of breath. After searching the jungle for Ahmad for the past day, he’d flown straight here.
Without a plane.
“Nope. You were right that there was a struggle, and some of the blood Will collected definitely tasted like Ahmad’s. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about him, but he’s never gone missing without checking in either.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Lucas’s voice from the doorway made us both turn our heads. He’s not a big man, but he’s solidly built, so he filled most of the opening, not even counting the pulsing blue-white aura that surrounds him. His salt-and-pepper hair had gone to mostly silver since I’d met him, but I knew more than one person who aged rapidly in a high-stress job. Right now, there was no higher-stress job in the world—human or supernatural—than being the head of Wolven. Things are going to hell in a handbasket all over the world, and he’s responsible for fixing anything that involves shape-shifters. That’s most of the problems in the news right now, even though the humans don’t realize it. “He’s not missing anymore. I just got off the phone with Ahmad and he’s on his way to Boulder. Should be here tomorrow. He wants a briefing about what he missed.” He rolled his eyes and shook his head before glancing at me and Will. “As you might guess, he was annoyed he had to travel this far just to talk to you two.”
I
shrugged. “You couldn’t have just handed us both the phone?”
Another shake, but this one with a level of agreement. “Doesn’t work that way in a debriefing. It has to be in person. You know that. And you had to come here to heal up. It was the closest location with full lab facilities. Rayna’s coming along, but we’re still trying to figure out what happened to Angelique. She’s definitely not herself . . . she’s actually cooperating with us without argument.” Like the rest of us, he was flummoxed at her attitude. Yep, she knew who she was. Yes, she remembered her imprisonment and was willing to talk about her captors. But gone were the demands and the haughty attitude that she’d carried for, apparently, her whole term on the council . . . which was more than a century. The change of personality was worrying enough to the physician in charge, Amber Wingate, that she’d called in her husband, Charles, to visit. He’s the chief justice of the council, a polar bear–shifter that pretty much everybody has intimated is the de facto ruler of the Sazi. “Amber’s got her under sedation magic until she can arrange for one of the traveling MRI rigs to come up here to see if she had a serious head injury that didn’t heal right.” He looked right at me, flinched visibly, and then added, “She’ll probably want to have Sue checked too, if you have no objection. Apparently, it’s . . . necessary at this point.”
That wasn’t something I liked hearing, and it spurred me to stand up and push my way past Lucas into the hallway. Yeah, he could probably hold me with magic and make me freeze in place for hours. He’s got the oomph to do that. But this time he didn’t. He’s mated too, so maybe he understands just what not feeling Sue in my head is doing to me. It wasn’t just the normal kind of twitchy that every husband feels when his wife is sick. This is deeper, like the phantom pain of a missing limb. Yet with a magical tie, you can’t see for certain whether the limb is still there. It was making me crazy.
The machines were beeping softly as I walked into the room. A wave of smooth, warm power tickled my skin, rising up from the bed. Healing magic isn’t like anything else. It’s a warm bath, a fluffy towel, and hot cocoa in front of the fire, all rolled into a cozy sensation that makes you feel like an hour after a big turkey dinner. Lazy, content, and sleepy.
But it didn’t make me feel lazy or content. It just washed over me and then past. My every nerve was on edge as I watched all the machines flicker and beep. “So, what’s wrong with her?” There was a gruffness on the edge of the words that spoke more of my fear than I liked anyone to know. But no doubt the healer’s heard it all. She’s been doing this for centuries.
Dr. Wingate—Amber to those in Wolven—pulled the stethoscope plugs from her ears and let out a sigh. “I wish I knew. I’ll be straight with you, Tony, because I think you can handle it. Her body just seems to be breaking down. The tissue and joints are degrading at a rate I can’t keep up with.” She reached forward and lifted the edge of the sheet. I had to suck in my breath in a hiss at the nasty bruise that covered half of one thigh. “Any idea how long that’s been there?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been home for a few days, but it wasn’t there last week. She said she’d been working out at the Wolven obstacle course with your sister-in-law, Tahira. A couple of the women there have been working at beefing up her self-defense skills. She prefers to be out of my head when I’m on jobs, and I figured it was a good way to keep her busy.” A thought occurred to me and it made me growl. “Did someone there hurt her?”
Amber shook her head and then sat down in the chair next to the bed. “Not according to Tahira. I just got off the phone with her. But the trouble is, when I try to heal it, the bruise just grows. It’s like it’s reacting negatively to my magic, which doesn’t make sense. I heal humans all the time . . . without them realizing it, of course. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“What about plain old human diseases?” My background as a human is too wide and deep to ignore, and I’ve noticed that an awful lot of shape-shifters forget about the obvious. “Have you done blood tests and checked her organs and such?”
Amber didn’t take offense at the question. That’s one of the things I like about her. “It’s the first thing I thought of, since she’s full human . . . not even a Sazi family member that we can find in her family tree. Kidneys, liver, and heart are all fine. Platelet count well within normal, so it’s not that her blood is too thin and her red and white cell counts are right in range. She even has a decent cholesterol count and absolutely average blood pressure. No autoimmune problems, cancer, meningitis, Lyme disease or chemical poisoning. But, she’s got necrosis in her nasal linings, spots in her lungs, bruising, and a rash on her back.” Another shrug, accompanied by a frustrated sigh. “I’ve got her on antiviral and antibiotic drips, plus an antiinflammatory. I’m starting into the rare diseases, but I don’t know . . . this just feels wrong. It feels magical, but backward. Like she’s allergic to the cure.”
“Well, people can be allergic to drugs. Why couldn’t a human be allergic to magic? Lucas told me that most attack victims don’t survive their first change. Could that be part of the reason?”
She tapped her fingers on the clean white sheet and got a thoughtful look on her face as she stared at Sue. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin to test for that, and it would be a really bad thing if she were.”
I couldn’t really see why. “If it’s healing magic that’s making her sicker, then just let her heal in a human hospital.”
She turned her face fully toward me and raised both brows. “And then what, Tony? If it’s magic she’s allergic to, then she’s allergic to you. You’re her tie to our world. So if it really is affecting her, every minute you spend with her, every moment you’re mated, is putting her closer to the grave.”
That logic leap was so obvious it shouldn’t have clubbed me upside the head as hard as it did. As it was, though, I sagged against the doorway and found my knees wouldn’t hold me very well. The queasy feeling in my stomach wasn’t helping my mood any, either.
“So how do we fix it? There has to be something that can be done. Can you shield her from me like you did when she was in Boulder? Are you shielding her now?”
She stood just as I spotted Lucas and Bobby coming down the hallway. “Yes. No. Maybe. I’m not shielding her now, so if you can’t feel her, then it’s worse than I thought. Frankly, I don’t know if that even is the problem. And, if it is, shielding might make her deteriorate faster. I’m going to have to consult with some other healers and maybe a few seers. My sister Aspen might be able to tell me what will happen. She likes you because you both have hindsight, so maybe. But don’t count on the seers being too horribly helpful in this. They look at the bigger picture, and that often leaves us little people out in the cold. For now, though, I’d say that it would be best if you weren’t here. I noticed the process speeding up when you walked in the hospital. It might be coincidence, but we can’t be sure and I’d like every advantage I can get.”
So. That was it then. It would make me laugh if I didn’t scream first. Sue wanted to hire me to kill her, one year ago this month. I said no, but amended that maybe I could in a year or so, if the heat on her from being a local celebrity where we lived, died down. Well, it did and a year has now passed.
Prophetic? Who knows? All I know is that it sucks. But I wasn’t going to let it sit until there was no other choice.
I was a kid when my mom got sick and died, and I couldn’t do anything but watch. This time, I wasn’t so willing to be a bystander. I stepped farther into the room as Lucas and Bobby reached the doorway and found myself staring down at her pale, perfect features. I didn’t want to leave her. Not for a second. But could I kill her by staying?
“Will’s ready to head back to Texas, Tony. You need to tell him anything?”
I shrugged and shook my head, not taking my eyes from Sue. Her auburn hair was shorter now, in a wedge cut. She told me on the phone last week she liked the way it bounced when she walked. Yeah, we can talk mind to mind, but sometimes
a voice on the phone is just comforting when you’re alone. And too, maybe she realized what was happening before anyone else, because we’ve been talking on the phone a lot lately. I never really thought about why she might call me, unless—
I turned my face to Amber with concern probably etched across it. “Is she in pain? Are these bruises and degeneration hurting her?” I had another sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I already knew the answer. It was what had been beating on me from behind that wall. “Shit. She is in pain. I can feel it.”
Apparently, that was another of those obvious things that made Amber’s eyes open wide her mouth form an O. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. If the small blood vessels are breaking and causing the bruising, then there could easily be pain. I should probably start her on something in her IV. Maybe that’s why she’s retreated into a coma-like state. Actually, there’s a weird condition with blood vessels breaking I remember reading about—” She grabbed the chart hanging on the end of the bed and a pen from the pocket of her smock, and walked out briskly, flipping pages and mumbling to the nurse next to her. “Let’s get someone up here to do a spinal tap and I’ll also need another blood sample. Then . . .”
I wanted to touch Sue, but feared doing so, even with the gloves on. All I could do was look on helplessly until I felt Lucas step close and let out a slow, deep breath. He was pulling in all his magic so that he felt like a normal human next to me. He’s one of the few alphas I knew who could do that and I appreciated the gesture if magic really was hurting her. I noticed Bobby stayed at the door. “You need something to take your mind off this before you start to pine.”
Yeah, that would be a bad thing. Had pining happen once, before they figured out that separating Sue from me with a shield could cause it. It’s like the mating magic is a drug and without it, I wound up going through a really vicious, cold-turkey withdrawal. Until Lucas figured it out, I was well on the way to putting a gun in my mouth and squeezing the trigger.
